In a significant development to boost its presence in the region, HCL Infosystems, a leading Indian IT company, has bought the remaining 40 per cent stake held by Dubai’s NTS Group in HCL Infosystems MEA for an undisclosed sum.

A Singapore-based, wholly-owned subsidiary of the parent company, HCL Insys enabled the buyout of the stake held by NTS in HCL Infosystems MEA. Once the shares are transferred, the company will be owned solely by HCL Insys and its status will change from a free zone company to a free zone establishment.

Two years earlier, HCL had acquired 60 per cent for $ 6.5 million of NTS to gain an entry into the Middle East and African markets. Speaking to Khaleej Times, Shivkumar Gopal, CEO of HCL Infosystems MEA, said the deal bodes well for the company’s expansion efforts.

‘‘This will strengthen our foothold, our specialised bouquet of offerings — HCL brand products, verticalised solutions and services to accelerate growth in this market. In addition, to address the distribution space as well.’’ He said the company views the Middle East as ‘‘very important’’ to propel its overall emerging market business. In April this year, the company launched its operations in Qatar, partnering Dyarco International, a business consultancy and subsidiary of Al Faisal Holdings. It also partners Consolidated Gulf Company to sell HCL laptops, desktops and tablets in the region.

With revenues of $ 2.4 billion, HCL offers computing, storage, networking, security, telecom, imaging and retail solutions.

Gopal said the buyout will help the company have a stronger focus and ‘‘enablement from the global HCL resource pool technically and commercially. He added that the firm does not have any acquisitions or major investments lined up for the moment.The company has forged partnerships with Apple, Cisco, Ericsson, Kingston, Kodak, Konica Minolta, Microsoft, Nokia and Toshibaa, and the MENA region is considered vital to the targets it has set itself. Looking back, Gopal says the firm has achieved much in the region in a short span of time. ‘‘Within two years of our existence in ME, we have grown to be amongst the top five Indian companies in the ME region.’’

He said HCL would streangthen the erstwhile NTS Dubai to create a larger business. ‘‘This acquisition is definitely a great value add with direct operations to address the system integration, services and distribution networks need in these regions. And also compliments the global HCL service offerings with the locally incubated solution stack in the surveillance and web content management requirements,’’ he said.